


The Point Before Breaking

by convoluted_path



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Bestiality, F/F, Other, Post-Canon, Vaskian Culture, leopards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 00:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17415212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convoluted_path/pseuds/convoluted_path
Summary: The Empress isn't used to restraining herself from doing whatever she likes, regardless of what anyone else might think of it.





	The Point Before Breaking

**Author's Note:**

> Please carefully note that this fic contains **bestiality**. It's not particularly hardcore as far as these things go, but there's still time to hit the back button if that's not something you can at all handle. Obviously, I don't endorse anything about this situation in real life.

In the early morning hours, when the sun is not yet even quite at the point of peeking out over the top of the tallest trees in the distant forest, Empress Vishkar watches as the Veretian and Akielon Kings finally depart, their entourage wrapping to form a tight mounted barrier around them. They'll intent to cross the border far to the south, through Halvik's territory – she understands that they have an ongoing quid pro quo of sorts with that tribe – but they still probably fear running into some of the more vicious of the mountain tribes before they can get that far. They'd be right to. Vishkar does have ultimate control over the tribes, yes, and won't hesitate to prove her dominion over them if they overstep, but punishing them for insubordination after the fact will do the Kings no good if they're killed in a scuffle. They _should_ be wary, even more so than they tried to be while in the palace.

This is the conclusion of a two-week diplomatic envoy in Skarva, which she suspects that King Laurent and King Damianos considered as much an excuse for a recreational sojourn from their own kingdoms as a necessary visit intended to reassure the Empress that even if – or when, according to her spies – Vere and Akielos meld themselves into an Empire of their own, they won't wish to challenge her borders. They aren't looking to expand, the Veretian King says. Just combine their own nations, nothing more. 

Vishkar will believe that when she sees it play out before her eyes and not before. After all, her Empire isn't currently expanding either, but if she sees an opening and the gain is worth her while, of course she'll take it. That's how the world works. The Kings should understand that perspective. It's what Vere and Akielos have both done with the centre region between their countries at opposite ends of the last hundred years, she understands. Though that was before their Kings started making moon eyes at each other and decided to share it, of course.

She tells them that she's content for the current peace between Vask and their respective countries to stand. She makes no solid promises for what will happen well into the future. She thinks King Laurent notices the omission, for she catches the slightest narrowing of his eyes at her phrasing, but he says nothing about it, probably thinking it's a concern for a later day. Vere and Akielos have enough more pressing problems to deal with right now, she thinks; perhaps it was more pronounced because Vask was expanded through bloodshed rather than alliance, but her own Empire has a long history of rebellions, and she can't imagine that theirs will be entirely absent of those either, considering how much their people have hated each other for countless generations. Let them go deal with that. She's glad to see them leave, anyway. 

Finally, she is out from under potential foreign scrutiny and able to go back to doing exactly as she pleases without concern for how it will be taken by those unfamiliar with her culture. Not that she isn't prepared to just crush any men who dare to question her, but given the current strength of the bonds between Akielos and Vere and the size of their armies if they're combined into one force, she thinks it's simpler to just avoid the hassle for now. Two weeks of pretending to be what they expect of her and give them no reason to question it is easier than months or years of war.

_Easier_ , but not actually easy. It's required her to remain indoors and particularly to restrict her bed partners for the entirety of the past two weeks so that the Veretians and Akielons can have no cause to wonder what might be drawing her outside during the nights. Being stuck inside has been mildly torturous. She doubts she could have tolerated a third week spent like that. The leopards certainly couldn't have managed it. Someone would definitely have been mauled.

As a general rule, Vaskians prefer tents and fireside mats to solid walls. It lets them be close to the earth, and to have the option of picking up and moving if the hunting grows scarce or a change in tribal lines opens up new and better options. Vishkar is no different than the rest of her people in that respect. She can't abandon her use of the palace entirely, for as one of very few permanent standing buildings in all of Vask it represents a show of unassailable power, but nor does she like to spend all her time inside a location that looks like it would be better suited to Kempt in the north than to her Empire. Sleeping directly under the stars, or with only a thin layer of canvas to separate her from them, is far more comfortable than being caged in multiple layers of stone and glass of a night. She has felt the deprivation from that openness almost as keenly as what else has been missing from her nights.

Once the Kings are out of sight, she immediately begins to make up for her too-long confinement by announcing that she'll be spending much of the day outside with Raseri and Makte. She joins their handlers – who always give leopards a more wary distance than Vishkar does, and who hold the chains as tightly as they're allowed within the constraints of her explicit orders – to exercise with them. She only ever runs by their sides, or sometimes even behind them when keeping exact pace with them isn't possible, when she does this. It's not that she thinks she shouldn't be allowed to lead. She just knows that if she runs out in front of them, they'll see themselves as pursuing her like prey, and things will suddenly shift from play towards something very different. She likes the risk of them, but not enough to invite a higher degree of danger for no benefit like that. 

It's clear from the moment they set off how much the leopards have desperately needed to be run, having also spent more time inside than usual over the past two weeks, chained to either side of her throne during the endless meetings and banquets and entertainments. Most of the time when they're by her side in such circumstances, they give off an impression of indolence, appearing fittingly docile as proof of her superiority over all her dominion. It's become widely acknowledged that if she can tame wild beasts that way, she can surely control and have power over anything and anyone. People don't understand that they aren't really tame at all. When they growl or swipe their short but powerful legs at petitioners who venture too close to the throne, it isn't because she's signalled for them to do so the way she would a dog, though she does purposely let people assume that's the case. It's because they're still mostly wild, despite their chains. They tolerate her, barely, but have little desire to deal with anyone, and it shows.

That's been even more obvious in the last couple of days of dealing with the temporary too-often-indoors routine, for they've been starting to show almost the same degree of agitation as Makte does whenever Raseri is locked away from him for the duration of her heats. It has, at least, provided Vishkar with some amusement over how the Veretians and Akielons tried not to appear discomforted while watching her two pets start pacing irritably on their short chains, looking as though at any moment they would break through the metal links and slaughter anyone in range. They would have done exactly that if the chains weren't so strong, she knows. Her pets aren't truly tame. And if she has her way, they never will be. 

She likes that they're so very different from people in that respect. She probably _could_ break them, if she specifically set out to do so, but it won't happen by accident the way it often does with humans. People are… too easily cowed for her tastes. 

She thinks specifically of what's happened to the Akielon King. It's a shame that he hadn't been sent to her palace instead of the Veretians' two years ago. She's heard that the now-King Laurent had once held Damianos's leash, much the same way she does with her leopards. _That_ version of Damianos had apparently been untamed and potentially vicious, capable of killing countless men as long as his Veretian keeper allowed it. And she hears he had been irrepressible, refusing to act like a slave despite his chains, for he knew he should be standing tall as a King himself. _That_ is the sort of things that appeals to her, and what no human in her life has ever come close to giving her. She would have enjoyed Damianos very much, then, had she been in the Veretian's position.

But having finally met the two Kings for herself these weeks just past, she knows that even if those stories were ever actually true, it isn't the case anymore. Instead of one subduing the other for gain, or even both of them strengthening each other like iron sharpens iron, she sees the ways in which they have seemingly made each other weaker over time through their softness towards each other. She was still tempted to invite Damianos to her bed just to see if she could provoke that forgotten wildness from him again – perhaps it only took the right handler to bring it out of him and keep it at the forefront, at least for a while – but it hadn't _quite_ been worth making an enemy of King Laurent, especially since she's almost certain King Damianos would have refused anyway. A pity.

She would never let the tragedy of what's occurred with Damianos happen to her beloved leopards. They might act pampered sometimes, but they'll never be allowed to truly grow weak and languid. She won't become too soft towards them, the way King Laurent has done with his own former 'pet'. She adores Makte and Raseri in her own way, but not to the extent that it would prevent her from gutting them if they ever became a decided threat to her or her rule. And equally, they might eat out of her hand and let her press against them on those nights when she seeks them out, but if they ever saw a true opening while hunger was pressing at their bellies, they would pounce. _That_ , in her opinion, was how a good ruler should understand all their relationships to be; mutually beneficial and convenient right up until the exact moment when they aren't any more. A good ruler must be aware that that moment could come at any time. She certainly is. She even revels in that understanding. The risk is half the point. That risk is one of the two things that's missing from the lovers she takes to her own bed.

The second missing thing, of course, is a proper spine. 

If Vishkar bares her teeth, she wants someone who will bare their own right back; challenge and acceptance, a battle of equals. That shouldn't be too much to ask. She wouldn't stand for such a challenge in public, of course, but between the sheets in private should be different. Her lovers should be able to tell the difference. Vishkar should be able to separate herself from her role when she's supposed to be coming apart at the seams. Instead, it is always the Empress and her subject rather than just two women lying together. That's never really enough for her.

Brenna, Vishkar's chief advisor – who was chosen because she's proven herself again and again in battle and has never once even flirted with the idea of fear or retreat – is perhaps the closest Vishkar has found to being different from the rest. She's certainly the only one who will boldly trace her fingertips suggestively up Vishkar's thigh and bestow heavily-lidded looks of suggestion her way in public without seeming to care for the possibility of reprisal for taking liberties. For that reason, she's the most constant visitor to Vishkar's bed. It helps that there's no lack of talent there, either. Brenna's tongue is equally quick and agile between both sets of lips, and her fingers have always proven to be long and dextrous and unafraid of delving wherever Vishkar wants or directs them. But though they have shared a bed countless times over the years, there has never been a time when Vishkar has ended a night with Brenna feeling entirely fulfilled, physically or otherwise. There's a flame in her hearth that remains unlit. Because even Brenna is not quite willing to treat Vishkar as she would any other lover. She wouldn't push Vishkar down and ravish her without a hesitation that seems to be born of reverence for the Empress. 

It's even worse with the men, who have been taught through the generations to know their place below the women well, even if they dislike it. She has many male concubines to choose from, of course, but she finds that she indulges in them less and less these days, now that she's already borne several strong daughters who will one day – when Vishkar either has aged too far past her prime to continue ruling with her current might or has departed from this world entirely – face off in battle against each other to determine which of them best deserves to claim their mother's discarded title. With the pressing need for heirs abated, there seems little enough point in bothering with men. After all, if she's in the mood for such things, experience says that Brenna is more adept with glass and metal cocks than most men are with what nature gifted to them.

Vishkar supposes it's lucky that there _is_ an alternative for her, even if it's not exactly a perfect one. She doesn't have to settle for men whose savagery is prone to erosion. There are ways in which her two pets are not ideal companions – ways that would have had the Akielons and Veretians judging her and directing their disgust in her direction, no doubt, for they wouldn't understand – but at least they never disappoint her the way that people always do. They're not her equals by any stretch of the imagination, but it's important to her that neither do they treat her like she's their superior, most of the time.

That's why she seeks them out that night, at first opportunity.

She slips out of the palace and into the tent in which the leopards are kept of a night. Raseri and Makte's tent has no canvas floor the way Vishkar's own travelling tent does. There are deep metal spikes driven into the ground at the centre, and the leopards are each attached to a chain hanging off those spikes whenever they're in here. She'd like to let them roam free during nights, given the choice, but their claws would rake through the tent walls like hot fat, and they'd be out and preying on her court in no time, or otherwise retreating into the forests never to be seen again. Much like the risk of keeping them at all, she only really enjoys their wildness when it has the potential to benefit her. She doesn't much care what that says about her. She's the Empress. Subduing others for her own gain is just a way of life.

There are deep scores in the exposed earth inside the tent from where the leopards pace around in there when they wake from sleep in the morning and have to impatiently wait to be conveyed outside. When the ground is exposed to her gaze, she can track the evidence of their progress around the tent, though it mainly tends to be in circles around the spike, prowling the limits of their chains. Tonight, however – as with most of those nights when she intends to stay with them until morning, especially during the colder months – she's had servants visit the tent before her arrival to temporarily cover sections of the earth with heavy wolf furs. They're enough to provide her with some warmth when she pulls away from the leopards' body heat to sleep, and they're plush enough to at least partially cushion the hard ground where she lies, often naked, upon the material.

She approaches the leopards' space cautiously. She knows if she startles them, she becomes a threat, and they'll react accordingly. She's learned well from those times when she moved a little too fast. Though they're never deep, and never to anywhere potentially lethal – she's always been sure to be at least _that_ cautious, prepared to leap out of range at the first indication of trouble from her pets – there are light traces of scars in places that no one except those who spend time in her bed ever see. So she sidles into the range of the chains in increments, giving them the opportunity to voice their displeasure if they don't want her there. Once she's close enough that they can reach her if they want, she stops and waits. Her muscles remain tense for now, primed, just in case she has to launch herself away. After all, they might be annoyed that she's been away for so long, among other potential reasons for them to lash out at her.

The leopards must know by now what it means when the furs are brought here, even before she appears. And they certainly seem to know what's coming when they see her fully bared to the darkness. Sometimes they ignore it, though, and refuse to come to her. Pointedly so. She accepts it when they curl up together across the tent and make her come to them. Leopards are supposed to be solitary creatures, she knows, and though they've adapted to the point that they abide by each other's near-constant presence, they don't always seek out a third. The leopards have minds of their own and aren't easily controlled. That's fine by her. It wouldn't be a challenge if they just did what she wanted all the time. That's really the whole _point_.

The last time she was in here they were huddled together away from her like that, though at least they weren't lying with their backs towards her pretending complete disinterest in her presence. They'd both been facing in her direction. Makte had watched her particularly intently as Vishkar approached, his legs extended out into the space between them. It was almost like a warning, except that his claws had been sheathed. That wouldn't have necessarily remained the case, though, so she'd still had to be careful. 

Tonight it isn't like that. Rather than giving her the cold-shoulder as punishment for her absence, they apparently prefer to take advantage of her finally being here. They shift to join her quickly enough once she's settled. They envelop her, Raseri on one side and Makte on the other, so that she barely has room to breathe. Even though she knows it makes it more difficult to escape quickly if necessary, she likes it best when it's like this. It makes her feel like she's not the only one among them who enjoys their time together like this, even though she knows she gets something different from it than they do.

Makte's face is pressed against her lower back. She occasionally feels the wetness of his tongue flicking out. If Vishkar weren't so boxed in by their powerfully-muscled bodies, it wouldn't take much to shift her body and spread her legs to get Makte to lap up the taste of her there. Both leopards have done that for her before. Nothing in her entire life has ever made her climax as hard as having a long, rasping tongue flickering out from between a mouth full of lethal teeth to delve into her. But it would mean pushing Raseri away, and Vishkar isn't interested in doing that tonight. She wants them close for a while.

The front half of Vishkar's body is pressed up snug against Raseri's side. She reaches her fingers out to caress through the spotted fur. She luxuriates in the texture of it both pressing along the length of her torso and carding over her nerve-rich fingertips. Every tickling brush when Raseri shifts in place makes her shiver, and the same is true when Makte shuffles up closer behind her. All the while, Vishkar's other hand moves to delve between her legs, capitalising on her own excitement and relief that this is _finally_ happening again, and on the resulting hypersensitivity she's experiencing. When one of Makte's legs kicks forward close enough for her reach for a short time, she grinds herself down against it. Then once Makte has withdrawn from her reach, she instead takes Raseri's tail gently in hand to brush the tip of it over herself, light as the touch of a feather and twice as soft. A low sound starts filling the tent when she does that, not quite a purr, but neither does it really evolve into a proper growl. She takes it as a warning to remain wary and ready to move, but she doesn't stop. The vibration of that sound resonates into Vishkar's body when she presses her core against Raseri's muscular side, so that she can feel it in her own bones and elsewhere. 

It doesn't take long for her to reach completion after that. Her climax is never far off on these nights, even though when she's with human lovers she sometimes never gets close to that point at all, no matter how long she or her partner might work towards it. The leopards have never once let her down like that.

Vishkar's back must arch a little too violently with the intensity of it, for she can feel Makte suddenly moving restlessly behind her, unsettled. She's quick to drag herself to her still-shaking legs and across the tent out of range before he can get any ideas to act against her. She shudders against the skinned furs when she would much prefer to be pressed to the real thing.

It's a pity that she can't always just be allowed to wallow in the afterglow, coming down from the high of pleasure slowly, when she does this. It would be nice to go lax and warm with the leopards still pressed around her. But it's too much of a risk to let herself be in range when she's temporarily weakened like that. And it does also adds something to the experience when the racing of her heart isn't just from pure exertion. It's part and parcel of what she enjoys about being with her pets that she doesn't get from any human. She likes that they don't care a whit for what position she holds; they'll decide to turn on her or not regardless of her being the Empress. To them, she's just a human woman who happens to provide food and entertainment, which seems to be enough for them not to hurt her most of the time, but might not always remain so. And although she doesn't actually want to die, the potential of it is still oddly exciting. The idea that one wrong move could end her life prematurely was surprisingly intense the one time she'd come close to death in a battle during a rebellion some fourteen years ago, when she'd been young enough to still have a whole inch to grow before she settled entirely into her skin. She's been trying to recapture that ever since, however she can. This is the closest she's managed. 

Even the absolute best of her nights with Brenna pale to a comical extent compared to the thrill of this. She's very rarely almost managed to recapture it by replaying the memory of her time with the leopards while Brenna is between her legs, but it always still pales. Her imagination is not quite as strong as reality. She can't trick herself into thinking that the danger is there when it's not, sadly. She needs the real thing.

The leopards don't rise to their feet and try to follow her to the corner where she's settled on her fur blankets. They seem content to stay where they are and probably fall asleep there. Apparently they've had enough affection from her for the night. Good. She wouldn't want them getting spoiled.

She can feel her own wetness seeping into the furs underneath her. It doesn't matter. Though it would have been potentially harmful for the Veretians and Akielons to speculate about what happens in this tent, she doesn't have to worry about that with her own people. The handlers who will come and retrieve them in the morning, as they always do, will say nothing of any of it. They never do. Not even when the cats don't clean themselves off sufficiently before the morning and evidence of her activities remain visibly caked on their fur. The handlers are either care too little or are too afraid to comment. She fairly certain it's the latter. They know better than anyone how she would be only too pleased to have an excuse to let Raseri and Makte off their chains and give them someone to chase who they really would be allowed to see as prey, to remind them what humans really are to them. What she would be, if they pushed their familiarity with her aside. She wants them to remain sharp, after all. 

Most people would probably consider that to be a strange thought to be lulled off to sleep by. But for the Empress of Vask, images of bloodshed have always been like bedtime stories. The sounds of the leopards across the tent also provide a soothing accompaniment that escorts her firmly into a more restful sleep than she's had in weeks.


End file.
